


Love in a Time of Zombies

by Shanola



Category: Walking Dead (comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shanola/pseuds/Shanola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five stages of love: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love in a Time of Zombies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevendeadlyfun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/gifts).



> Spoilers through issue 101.

Denial

It wasn’t love at first sight. Maggie didn’t think it was even lust at first sight. More like….a way to scratch an itch. Relieve some tension. Forget her jerk of an ex. 

And Glenn wasn’t bad looking. He didn’t seem like an ass, and he made it plain he was willing. Not that she was desperate!

Well, okay; maybe a little desperate. Her batteries had run out months ago and it wasn’t like she could ask her *dad* for more. 

That night, she waited in the dark while Glenn gave Rick the slip. She took his hand, calloused and rough but strong and slender, and led him around to the old Buick at the back of the barn. 

“Wow,” Glenn said. “What year is this?” He was running his hands over the car’s fenders. 

Maggie stopped for a moment in disbelief, and leaned against the door. “What year? You really want to know what year this old junker was made?” 

A sheepish look came over Glenn’s face. “Um-“

Maggie didn’t give him a chance to answer. She wrenched the back door open and said, “Who cares what year it is? Old. It’s the year old and there’s plenty of room in the back seat.” She couldn’t help but smile at the stunned look on Glenn’s face.

“Coming?” she said and climbed inside. “Cuz I sure plan to.”

Glenn closed the door softly behind him.

No, she wouldn’t call it love at first sight.

Love overnight, perhaps. Because somewhere in the back seat of that old car, with Glenn doing things to her (and she to him!), they made a connection that was more than just physical.

It felt different with Glenn than with anyone else she had ever been with. He felt right in a way that was….well, he felt like home. 

The next night, after her sister and brothers had been buried (oh God, oh God), Glenn had been a rock, a refuge. It felt like his arms would keep even the dead at bay. He dried her tears and whispered to her and held her and kept her from spinning away in a whirlwind of hurt. 

And then he had chosen to stay with her. 

“I’m not going. I’m in love, Rick – or as close as I’m liable to get,” Glenn had said.

And then he had said, “I am happy. I didn’t think it was possible, but I am.”

No, it wasn’t love at first sight, but it was a start.

~~

Anger

When Maggie was a kid, her Mom and Dad brought home another sibling. Maggie rushed out with her sister to see the new addition. A baby! After all these months, it was finally here! 

But she stopped, uncertain, when she saw her Mom *and* Dad each holding a bundle of blankets. Lacey danced around shouting “Twins! Twins!”, but Maggie stayed back and got lost in the bustle of grandparents and aunts and uncles all there to see the new little ones. 

Later, when everyone had gone, Maggie climbed up on the couch next to her Mom and looked at her two little sisters. Her Mom put one warm pink bundle in Maggie’s lap and leaned in close.

“This is Susie and this is Rachel,” her Mom said. “Twin girls. It’s amazing, isn’t it, Maggie?”

Maggie nodded. It was…something, for sure.

“I was as surprised as anybody, but I’m so, so glad. They will always have each other, just like you and Lacey.”

“I’m not Lacey’s twin!” Maggie said.

“Nope, but you two always had each other to play with. And you two could band together against your brothers. It’s a sort of….built-in protection against the world, don’t you think?”

At the time, Maggie took her mother’s word as truth. Her sisters were protected because they were a pair. Two is better than one, yadda, yadda, yadda. Now she knew better.

She lay across her father’s lap, remembering her sisters; the way they laughed (don’t think about the sounds their severed heads made), their silly games (don’t think about the way their dead eyes moved), their sweet baby-smell (don’t think about the blood). Focus on the good: they are with Mom, they are-oh God, which one went first? Were they afraid? If only she and Glenn hadn’t found the barber shop. If only she had gone with them. Why hadn’t she gone with them? If she had been there-if she and Glenn hadn’t-if, if, if. 

Glenn. 

Glenn had been able to move in and….take care of Susie and Rachel in a way she couldn’t. He gave them peace and a final rest.

Why had they come here, to this prison? For the illusion of safety? Well, they had discovered there were worse things than the walking dead. Here there be monsters.

Maggie moved when her father and brother started to fight. She watched as their argument turned to violence. Well, on her father’s part, anyway. She marveled that they could move at all.

And then Rick was at their cell and he gave a name to the murderer. Maggie stayed in the cell as her dad and brother left with Rick.

The monster had a stupid name. Thomas Richards? Like two first names or two last names. No normal person has a name like that, do they? He looked like a damn accountant. 

Millions of people were dead. Millions. But this child-murderer managed to live? 

Maggie wasn’t sure how long she sat there, alone and thinking, until Glenn appeared at the door.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

Good question. Maggie honestly wasn’t sure how to answer it. Finally, she said the only thing she could think of.

“I don’t think I’m going to love you anymore.” 

Some kind of emotion passed over Glenn’s face; Shock? Hurt? Confusion? She wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. 

“What’s the point?” she said. “You’re just going to die like everyone else.”

Glenn didn’t say anything for a long time. Eventually, he sat beside her. She didn’t look at him.

“You know,” he finally said. “Everyone dies. Even before the crazy things that have happened started, we were all headed for death. Just a matter of time.”

Maggie waited. 

“It just isn’t fair that your sisters…that they…” Glenn trailed off into silence.

Her fists clenched. Not fair. None of it was *fair*. Life wasn’t *fair*. The dead eating the living wasn’t fucking fair. Hell, her mother’s death wasn’t fair!

But some fucking *animal* hacking her little sisters to pieces? God-*damn* she felt helpless. 

Something cold and hard and smooth was placed in her hand. A gun. Glenn’s gun. The one she had learned to shoot with. She cradled the gun, and as she turned it over in her hands, the chill of the metal seemed to seep into her blood, until it filled her completely.

Abruptly, Maggie stood. In a cold rage, she moved. She wasn’t sure how she got to the hall. She wasn’t sure of the cells she walked past, or of Glenn following her. Her mind was clear and cold, and she felt as if she was being led by weight of the gun in her hand to a very precise location.

Later…afterward…when she was feeling better, Glenn took the gun back from her without a word.

~~~

Bargaining

When her mother was dying, Maggie used to try to make a deal with God. 

If you will just let her get better, I will keep my room clean.

If you will let her get out bed today, I will not use curse words again, ever.

If you will let her sit up today and eat, I will go to church every Sunday. 

If, if, if. She had gotten over that a long, long time ago.

Until they came across Rick and Carl. 

At first, Maggie was pleased. They were okay and they were coming to get them, to take them back to the prison (not that she was sure she wanted to go). 

When Rick told her…when he said….when the final walls of her Life Before came crashing down, and she knew she was the only member of her family left, Maggie realized that she had been unknowingly begging every day. 

If I move this coat from the hall closet, Dad won’t find it when he needs it. 

If I move the couch, Dad won’t like it. 

If I don’t work in the barn, Dad will be mad when he gets back.

She studied Glenn that night as they lay in bed. Her husband. Sophia slept in the room next door. Her daughter. Her family. Her new family. 

Maggie lay down and stared into the darkness.

If she loves Glenn enough, he won’t leave her. If she takes care of Sophia, she can practice being a mom. If she has a baby, a new life to hold, someone would always be there to love.

Deep down, she knew it was all lies. 

~~~ 

Depression

The dead kept coming for them: through the fields, down the road, in the walls, the pictures of her former life staring at her from every wall in the house. Maggie hadn’t known that a house could die. She knew it now.

She was glad to leave, to head out to a world….well, not exactly unknown. Death waited for them out there. But at least she wasn’t living in a corpse of a house.

Not that a tent was better. Or a van. Or…well, anything, really. Everything was dead, everything she touched or loved. Glenn would be dead soon, she was sure of it. So would little Sophia. Poor Sophia; she was surrounded by so many people who loved her to death, which turned out to be fairly often.

But why bother when there would be no future, no legacy? Just plow through every day, new place maybe, but still the same old same old, until something ate you?

And everyone else was moving forward, talking and laughing (how could she laugh when she couldn’t find her voice?) and making wry jokes when they could. Sophia and Carl played, but she wasn’t sure what games. Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down? Maggie could barely move.

Sometimes, Maggie thought she had left something vital at her house. She would go through a list in her head then. Jeans? Check. Extra bra? Check. Food? Ha. Shoes, boots, socks, soap, toothbrush, drugs…check, check, check. 

Then one day, Maggie realized what she had left behind; her heart. Which was odd, when she thought about it. She was sure she had given it to Glenn for safekeeping. Turns out, the old house had eaten it, as sure as a zombie would have feasted on it.

No need to bother anymore. She had diagnosed her problem. And she knew the remedy.

Rope.

~~~~

Acceptance

Glenn’s touch. His smell. His taste. The stubble of his hair as it grew out again. The stubble of his beard in the morning. His laugh. His presence. The way he said her name. The way he said her name for the last time.

All these things were fading. 

For so long (Months? Years? Hours? She kept losing track), he had been her rock. He held her together in the loose times, through the grief, in the joy. 

She would bear his child and raise him or her without him. She would hold Sophia at night and they would cry together. She would hold the baby close at night, and they would cry together. She would cry alone, she would mourn. She would carry on.

And always, always, always, she would treasure the dark days, the very worst times, because that was when Glenn had been his brightest and at his best; and that had always led her to the very best times. 

That was life.

That was love.

 

~finis


End file.
